Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Sure, yep, testing, testing.

Aaron Brown's view is much better than yours apparently. Kimberly and one they're both excused I'd like to call to order the East Point Planning Commission meeting for 7 p.m. June 4th 2026 secretary, please call the roll Mrs. Hall Rayford here Mr. Stokes here.

Mr. Sasek here miss you Linsky here and chairman to hunt here.

I moving on before we ask for an approval of the agenda I would like to add an item under new business this was a request of City Council to do an initial review of the vehicles abandoned are the vehicles abandoned unlicensed and inoperable ordinance so can we get that under new business item C So moved. We have motion. Do we have support?

Support.

We have motion and support. Secretary, please call the roll.

Mr. Sasek?

Yes.

Mrs. Hall-Rayford? Yes. Mr. Stokes?

Yes.

Ms. Jelinski, yes. Chairman DeHaan?

Yes. Moving on to the first hearing of the public. You have three minutes to speak. Please write your name on the piece of paper on the podium there. Does anybody wish to be heard?

Hi, Jennifer Nicholas, East Point resident. Yeah, I was at the city council meeting on Tuesday night when the ordinance about inoperable vehicles came through there. And I guess, you know, maybe I just have a couple questions about it because my understanding is it's two separate bodies that govern these ordinances for inoperable vehicles that are on the street or junk cars on the street. It is the police department code enforcement that is responsible for ticketing them for anything that is in the driveway or the yard or not in a garage that would be building official code enforcement. So, you know, I know there was confusion at the city council meeting because the agenda item came through as a request from the police department specifically for cars on the street. However, when you read through the ordinance, it also is including cars that are in people's driveways or yards, which I think would be handled differently. I do, you know, I spoke with chief Haynes and it is fairly important to him to get his portion of the ordinance approved because they are running into issues with vehicles on the street that have been sitting there forever that are inoperable that are, Impeding them when when they're trying to make emergency runs in that so I don't know if there's a way to Separate out this ordinance maybe and get that part Discussed and approved and then maybe spend a little more time as far as the portion with vehicles on residential properties Which would fall under the building official code enforcement That's my thoughts on that. Thank you. I

Thank you does anyone else wish to be heard? Anyone else wish to be heard? Seeing none and Mr. Myron's nodding his head we will close the first hearing of the public and we'll move on to approval of the minutes. Can I get a motion to approve the minutes of the April 2nd 2026 meeting?

I motion to approve the minutes from April 2nd 2026.

We have motion do we have support? Support. We have motion by Ms. Rayford, support by Mr. Sasek. Secretary, please call the roll.

Mrs. Hall-Rayford? Yes. Mr. Sasek? Yes. Mr. Stokes?

Yes.

Mr. Zielinski, yes. Chairman DeHaan?

Yes. We have no public hearings, so we will move on to new business. Item A, master plan update and discussion. Is somebody introducing our inscrutable team on the wall, or is there a preamble prior to that? Okay, Mr. Finley, Ms. Brown, it's all you.

Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to present to you today. We wanted to come with an update for you. And to get us started off, I'm going to hand it over to my colleague, Aaron Brown, going to look at some of our early findings, a quick summary of those findings from some of the engagement efforts that we have been conducting over the last few months. Aaron.

Great. So as Erin said, just going to be kind of a high level overview of some of the key takeaways from two different engagement activities. The first being that second round of open houses, and then the second being a business survey that we had in the field that was closed in mid-May. So just as a reminder, we hosted a second round of open houses at the end of April. We asked folks who were there to participate in about seven different activities. primarily to collect feedback on East Point strengths and weaknesses and then kind of different priorities. So through those different activities and conversations that we had, we kind of found a few different main through lines that emerged. So the first being an emphasis on improving what already exists. The second being, you know, kind of focusing on those fundamentals, maintaining and improving basic services such as public safety, you know, road maintenance, sidewalk maintenance, things like that. And then the third being a desire for community building and the third spaces. We heard a lot about growing the number and type of different events, creating more gathering spaces, things like that. And so that desire for connection kind of echoes some of those sentiments from the business survey, which for the sake of time, we'll switch over to now. And so the results that we're looking at today are just for folks who own a business in East Point or they own multiple locations for their businesses. And one of those is in East Point. In total, we had 42 respondents who currently own a business in East Point. And so based off of different estimates, that's about 5% of East Point businesses. So as you can see here, we got a number, we got a good number of responses from different size employers from, you know, kind of those micro, what we would call those micro enterprises, you know, one to two people, three to four people up through those larger employers. You can see that a lot of our respondents were those legacy businesses, you know, nearly half had been in business for 10 years or more. But even so, we still had a good number of, you know, those small, those newer businesses. And then, as far as where folks were located primarily we had folks responding, who are located on grass, but also, you can see the different commercial corridors as well as a number of you know those home based businesses. So one of the questions we asked folks to respond to was to rank community improvements based on the potential impact on the East Point business community. This was a ranked choice question and the choices were shown in a random order. So, you know, it wasn't just that one was at the top and so that is what always rose to the surface. And so what you can see here was marketing and branding, you know, an entrepreneur and small business hub and those mixed use developments. And I think kind of continuing through those themes from the open houses, right, that small business hub or, you know, mixed use development, that live work concept kind of highlights that desire for community connections. And then thinking about, you know, what do business owners need, we asked them to select the three most needed, you know, business services or business supports. And so, again, you can see here kind of that improved communication from business support providers and networking opportunities and events rising to the top, which, again, speaks to that need for connection, community engagement, as well as, you know, marketing services also, I think, speaks to that as well. And then I'm going to turn this over to Aaron.

Thank you so much, Aaron. Just really quickly before you jump to the next slide. So we do see that improved communication from business support providers and networking opportunity events and marketing services. Again, seeing, as Aaron mentioned, some of these things are repeating, whether we talk to... You know, residents and hear from them, whether we talk to leadership as well. We talked to the business community and also a number of things that are not necessarily represented in this data. But we have been conducting a number of interviews as well with city staff. We still have a couple of those that we are still working to get scheduled, including, you know, we hope to have the opportunity to have some one-on-one conversations with members of the Planning Commission and also members of City Council. But as we start to collect all of this information, collect all of this data, We are starting to build out some of the strategic framework for the Economic Development Strategic Plan and the Master Plan. And we thought we might give you just a little bit of a peek behind the curtain today. One of the things that we are taking a look at here, and if you could jump forward, please, is... including a build-out based on our last conversation, which before this body was a joint session, I believe, with city council as well. I think that's the last time we presented. And a large part of the conversation that took place on that day had to do with efforts to continue to engage the public, to reach out, create communication channels, and make sure we're hearing from the residents there in East Point. So one of the things that we have thought about as we're building out a strategic framework is building out some strategies and some best practices from around the country, but also from some neighboring communities there in Michigan to see what people have been doing to help establish those connections and build that trust with the community members, which overall can, I think, create a more fertile ground for things like long-term planning efforts, for helping to hear what the residents are wanting, what the business community is wanting, and turning around and trying to get that information from them and also create opportunities to kind of make those changes. I think a lot of it starts at that trust building at that community engagement level. So we're just going to think of just a quick look at some of the things that we are building out as part of those engagement efforts and best practices that we're seeing. So this is the critical thing and I just got done talking about it. And Aaron and I were just at the National Planning Conference in Detroit not that long ago. And one of the main things that we heard about that was so critical for success in a lot of the presentations that we heard about was this notion of engaging early and often. So even before we want to go to the community and say, hey, what do you think about this plan or that plan or whatever? anything like that, really already kind of seeding that ground to have those opportunities for communication and building trust. So engage early and often. Just a couple of things that we've seen people doing and with a couple of examples, really using social media to kind of speak authentically which helps to drive engagement. It doesn't feel so stilted just because it's coming from City Hall. And then also has that as an opportunity to collect user generated content. One of the things that we can see as an example here is using maybe something like a hashtag. Make your point right on social media. People can go around and have a campaign around posting their favorite spots around town, something like that. Also really critical to establish regular avenues for disseminating information and collecting feedback. So those aren't just kind of one-off surveys when the consultants like us come to town, but really kind of putting in the groundwork to have those regular avenues. So when people do want to get information about what's happening with the city or to provide that feedback, There are already established channels and avenues for doing that. When we talked to, in our interview with the city manager, we talked about kind of a historic tradition at the White House called the Big Block of Cheese Day, which is an open-door day where people can come and share their ideas, share kind of any thoughts they have about the community. And so we put together a little hashtag, maybe something like Mondays with the manager. I'm sure Ryan would be very excited to have something like that. And then also really think about activating the advocates and community leaders that are already in the community. We're not always necessarily asking people to come to City Hall when they want to engage with the city, but really, you know, establish those kind of pipelines and those kind of grassroots opportunities to be out in the community as opposed to just being in City Hall and really kind of foster a more engaging and open and transparent environment as far as trying to give opportunities for the community to feel the presence of their leaders. And one of the ways to do that, Erin, if we go to the next slide, please. is, and this directly comes from the feedback that we got, is hosting and participating in more community events. I think we know there's big winter events around the Christmas tree lighting, but maybe the creation or identification of a big summer signature event. We know farmers markets are planned for Civic Points when it comes online here in just a few weeks. But even things like cookouts or food truck festivals, Aaron and I were talking about maybe it'd be a fun idea to have a recycling day cardboard sled race down the hill at Spindler Park or something like that. Just have these events, be out in the community, have community come out, but not necessarily when we're trying to ask them for something all the time, but just kind of have these community building events. We also think that utilizing some existing assets might be a good opportunity for that. As I mentioned to a couple of you and to a couple of city council members when we were there in person, we've got our eye on the different commercial corridors. We really think that there's a lot of untapped opportunity at the Kelly Road corridor. One of the things that we've noticed is that a lot of those parking lots in front of those buildings are city-owned properties. So it's a great opportunity to maybe utilize existing assets. Maybe that would be a good place to set up some picnic tables just for one Saturday afternoon, have a cookout, you know, maybe have the local businesses either sponsor or participate in some of those events. That's a really great opportunity. And, of course, as Civic Point opens, another great place. So just kind of utilizing the existing assets you have. and then also partnering and participating in other community events not necessarily ones that the city is putting on um oh the the name immediately escapes me but i think there's a big car uh event activity this summer uh like the name immediately escapes me but at any rate just making sure that maybe there's opportunities for the city to have a little bit more participation i know there's ribbon cuttings coming up for both the splash pad and CivicPoint, those are great opportunities. We don't want to kind of let those pass by. I think about maybe volunteering or tabling or sponsoring where possible other community events that are taking place. And then finally, you know, one of the things that, you know, as we kind of paying attention to, you know, the city council meetings and conversations we've been having, There seems to be some opportunity to improve the trust that the residents have of their leadership of the city hall and a lot of these issues. And so really kind of focusing on ways we can start to rebuild that trust is really maybe expanding access to kind of the city processes and those functions. through maybe even like a civic leadership academy, maybe tours of the fire department or the police station or something like this. Also, we've seen success, the community we were paying attention to down in Florida, they were doing a lot of these one page plain language summaries of different topics that were happening in the community. So for example, maybe around the importance of code enforcement. just as one opportunity that might spring to mind. And just kind of communicating why maybe if there has been like a renewed energy around some code enforcement measures, maybe that's an opportunity to kind of talk about why that's happening, what we're hoping to accomplish, what's the thinking behind it, and what we're trying to get out of it. Just really plain language, transparent conversations to help build trust And then we've also seen success in other communities around trying to reduce barriers to participating in either the process or maybe even city council meetings. We've seen some communities even offer things like free child care, right, or children's events that are happening around the same time, so maybe people can you know, also participate in meetings if, you know, where they otherwise would have children and wouldn't be able to attend. We've seen other things that have been successful and just trying to alleviate or remove some of those barriers. So what we really want to make sure for East Point to succeed, I think it's really important to start establishing those trusts, those avenues for conversations, because quite frankly, we have seen quite a bit of distrust in in conversations that we've been having instead of the data, qualitative and quantitative, I think that we've been collecting as well. So we wanted to be quick. We know you have some other things on your agenda today, but did want to go through a little bit about the summary from the data, summary from the engagement efforts that we've been doing, and then also just a little bit of a gesture towards what some of these strategic build-outs might look like or have involved in them as we think about that kind of engagement strategy piece. And now I'm happy to open it up to any questions.

Who's up? Chairman DeHunt. First, I'd like to ask Director Myers a question. So how many businesses do we have licensed in the city, roughly? legitimately licensed? Well, how many? 700. I'm sorry, how many? 700. 700. And they received dreams over and over and over. Thank you.

Does anyone else have any other thoughts, comments?

I do. It seems to me they would be really helpful to develop a team or district approach in order to physically go to some of these 700 businesses and find out their thoughts. Other than that, I don't see how we're gonna force anybody to respond. So putting forth the effort to actually talk to people might make a difference.

Unfortunately, we are a community that will get the pitchforks and torches out When we don't like something But when it comes time to actually giving feedback We have mr. Edwards, but miss Nicholas we have mr. Myron Nobody else but we'll get the torches and pitchforks out if somebody tries doing something we don't want and And this is discouraging to me. And I'm not trying to shame anybody. No, I am trying to shame somebody. I'm trying to shame 33,000 people in this community that aren't contributing outside of a handful. The information that you're getting is coming from the same people in repeated different fashions. You're not getting anything new. or you're gonna get the random musings of somebody who's pissed off because they're not being allowed to do something in their business that they should think they should be able to do. I don't envy your job, quite frankly. We're dealing with a school district that I think they had 96 graduates, somebody told me. I think when I graduated in the dark ages, we had a thousand, 96 kids. So you're dealing you're developing a master plan with a failing school district As well as a disengaged community unless it's personally motivating to them So I take my hat off to the the the daunting tasks that you have And I hope that you have How far away are we from some timelines and some actual, this is where we're going to be in six weeks. This is where we're going to be in nine weeks, whatever. Are we getting close to that?

As far as completion of the drafts of the plans? Yeah. Yes. The short answer is yes. I mean, one of the things that we are meeting with our entire team, You know, as I mentioned, we have just a couple, I would say, a handful of interviews that we still would like to get scheduled, but we're pretty much at the end of a lot of the kind of data collection, I guess, if you will. We're in the middle of conducting research. Like I said, you can see already, like, on best practices, on case studies. We are working on some draft strategic frameworks. and we've already talked to some city staff and gotten some feedback from them on what they would like to see amended or where different approaches might be best for what those frameworks should look like. So I think we are in that stage. This unfortunately is a part of the project that takes some time and there's not always a lot to show for it. But I do think that if we're looking to if there's another planning commission session for us to present to in one month, we will probably be at a position then to have at least some strategies to workshop with you at that time. It might be a further build out of some of the engagement strategies that you've seen, but there are a couple other things. I don't want to tip my hand too much, but as we think about creating over the years, right, to try to engage, and we're not hearing much back That's why really when we think about this engagement strategy that isn't quite often something you'll see in every master plan or even every economic development strategic plan that's really kind of focused on laying that groundwork, almost starting at step zero in a lot of cases about building relationships and networks and opportunities to kind of do that community building, those conversations we're having with our residents. We've seen that, we're hearing that, and again, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a full engagement strategy build out in a lot of other master plans, but we feel like you do very strongly that laying the groundwork for that is going to have to be an important and first step before we can think about long-term planning and what it takes to not just have those ideas and put them on paper, but follow them through step by step and accomplishing them, seeing them through to fruition. A lot of that starts at this kind of stage. And so we're trying to find low cost opportunities to just start laying that groundwork so we can start to hear more. Maybe, you know, try to have have more of a presence, again, out in the communities and things like this. I think that's going to be a critical first step to try to address some of the challenges that you note.

Okay. Does anybody have anything else? No? Okay. Thank you for your presentation, and you're always welcome to make a presentation to us.

Thank you so much. Always good to see you all, and we'll talk again soon.

Thank you. Moving on to item B. Mr. Erbil or Mr. Myers, who wishes to discuss this?

So your regular scheduled Planning Commission meeting is on the 2nd of July, two days before I'm going to say. But I would love to hear from my fellow commissioners.

Well, that's exactly what I told you. Yes.

Yes, calendar set. I don't understand what a week is going to accomplish for them to get something in when they've known for that long. And if we come to a motion, I'm a no.

Interestingly enough, when... Interestingly enough, when I saw this, I really thought it was one or two of the commissioners would have possibly had a conflict because of the upcoming 4th of July holiday and maybe leaving town a little early. But again, I'm in agreement that we start doing this for applicants. We're really opening a can of worms.

I agree with both of you. Looks like this one's going down in flames. It seems to me that maybe you can just discuss this with the applicant and see if they can move up their timetable.

Yeah, my guess is they have 4th of July plans.

Do we have a reason? Mr. Myers? Do we have a reason?

Reading. Motion. A reason.

I'm sorry, the question is why the applicant needs July 9th as opposed to July 2nd.

They expect it to be able to make the submission deadlines for July 9th, but do not anticipate for July 2nd.

And to counter off of that, this client has not been sitting on the wings and just knowing our schedule and our plan, they brought it to us about a week and a half ago, maybe a little longer, and we had an administrative meeting evaluating the potential opportunities that were coming, and they were trying to get in as quickly as possible. being that it was a holiday, they asked if it would be possible to move that one week and stretch it. And that was their real request. And I'm sure they'll do their very best to get it in. If not, they will comply with your request to wait all the way to the next month.

Move the July meeting until 9th anyway. Is that a conflict or discussion of this matter? Is that a conflict?

discussion on this matter or I mean if we if we approve it tonight wouldn't that work pretty much in the same manner I guess I'm trying to understand what one week to these folks is why what what is what is creating the hardship of a week

They have several pieces of document they want to get resolved that is above their pay rate and grade and they're working on another partial parcel and they've already submitted a request for that to be rezoned and they're planning that to get into the page as well. And then you have to get to the city newspapers.

Chair, then wouldn't it behoove them to wait until the next meeting? I'm very grateful that they wanna do such a large project.

Their request would be not to, and they'd like to get us started and find out how far they can get in this early season of building if they can.

I'm sorry, maybe I'm a little dense tonight, but if we're going to approve moving the scheduled date to the 9th.

That's the time, the date that they want? They would be willing to take that, and that was offered by the staff because of the holiday break, and they wanted to know if they could hit their deadlines on that week and present the case.

Yeah, I'm not saying that we should schedule an applicant to move that. I'm saying if we're already thinking about it.

Well, no, we're only thinking about it because of the request of the applicant.

I hear what you're saying, but what I'm hearing is that they're requesting to move that to the 9th of July.

Is that correct? No, we offer a consideration that maybe that would help them get all the things they need to present to you. We, as the administration, offer to see if this commission would grant them that.

Speak loudly.

This applicant. I'm sorry.

It's our lovely system.

Yes. This applicant has three significant parcels. It was city administration's suggestion to move. It has nothing to do with the holiday. It was more of the requirement that the publication notice to the surrounding properties would need to go out this week, but they couldn't, Right. We wanted to be able to put it out next week. Um, and, uh, but you know, it's a current business that wants to expand. Um, and it was our suggestion.

Mr. Chair, I think I took the context as they had just asked and they didn't really provide a reason, but now knowing that city administration was working with them for this reason, it makes more sense to me. I'd be open to it.

And they want to break ground by September 1st, which is really important to the timing of their project.

So I don't think it sets a precedent necessarily of city administration is blame it on us.

You take so much blame as it is. So without giving too much away, give us a ballpark estimate how big this project is going to be. On 9th, 2026. We have motion. Do we have support? I support. We have motion and support. Secretary, please call the roll.

Mrs. Hall-Rayford? Yes. Mr. Stokes?

Yes.

Mr. Sasek?

Yes.

Ms. Ulinski, no. No. Chairman Duhonk?

Yes. Moving on to item C. I'm going to defer to Mr. Albright on this.

Thank you, Chair. Did all the commissioners receive my email from yesterday? Yes. Good. Because I did break it out. I explained it, how a portion of this proposed ordinance is providence of the police department in issuing tickets and dealing with abandoned unlicensed cars and there's also a section here that is that involves motor vehicles on private property which would be the building department slash code enforcement mr. Myers is here to answer any questions regarding that portion of the proposed ordinance the police department chief Haines is certainly requesting that the section with regard to vehicles on the streets and highways as I outlined in my email and he certainly wants that approved and I believe that all of the members on council are in agreement with that the portion that they wanted to refer over to the Commission for review consideration and a recommendation would be the sections involving the storage of unlicensed vehicles vehicles on private property so Mr. Myers do you have any comments as to as to those portions of the ordinance and if there is a need currently for something like that as a tool for code enforcement in the building department?

By all means. There's more and more growing concerns with non-operable vehicles, everything from non-registered. The penalty structure has to be a little bit more available so that it gets moved. Our biggest tool we have in it now is if it's a rental property, we can restrain and resist the ability to have a certificate of occupancy and a certificate of compliance to a rental property if the tenant or the owner of the property does not move that vehicle off the properties.

And currently the proposed ordinance under the penalty section it provides that a first offense is would well any offense would be a civil infraction but a first offense would be subject to a minimum fine and of two hundred dollars and a second or subsequent offense would be subject to a minimum fine of four hundred dollars. That's somewhat of a graduated penalty section. Other sections of the city ordinances have instances where a first offense is a civil infraction, meaning It's a fine only. There's no possibility of jail time. If it would be a misdemeanor for a subsequent offense, the fines can be up to $500 and up to 90 days in jail. Are you requesting that the penalty section be amended at all, or are you comfortable with leaving it just as a civil infraction?

this point the first offense I'd leave it as a civil but once it gets past that it gets to court and doesn't get response then it needs to find another level of penalty.

Okay and Mr. Myers one last question how does this ordinance or how would this ordinance play into someone who is possibly working on a car on their own on their property That vehicle would have to be located within a garage as opposed to it Again for a number of reasons because as they work on that girl that car and they put it in not the driveway But they put it even in their grass in the backyard then only being the shark type ordinance I can't speak for all of the particular communities, but I know that other communities have these types of ordinances, okay and then

We don't have to do anything with respect to the police department, so that is taken care of in the ordinance as it is now. We don't have to worry about Chief Haynes is going to be able to go and start doing what he needs to do with abandoned vehicles.

The ordinance hasn't been subject to a first reading yet. It was just in front of the council this past Tuesday for a first reading after a discussion at the council table yesterday. There was an agreement amongst the City Council members that the matter be referred over to The Planning Commission for review and a recommendation I do know that miss Nichols did speak out at the at the City Council meeting and I anticipated that she would also be here this evening in fact I did indicated my email that there would be at least one resident unnamed. Of course that would be appearing here this evening with her comments All right, so

City Council agreed with how it pertained to the chief and cars on the streets and the discussion points or the issues were vehicles on private property yes so first question my car is out of commission I get paid once a month I parked my car in my driveway don't have money to get it fixed or the mechanic that I use can't get to it for X amount of time more than I think 48 hours is the number that I'm seeing what is the answer to that question

Our ordinance is written in such a manner that based on a compliance to our violation, we would grant a 30-day notice for them to remove or make operable the vehicle. If it is not done in that manner, then they have a five-day notice giving them a final warning that they have another five business days to give us a directive and a plan of when they plan to get that thing done. So each of our notices do not say, 30 days or else. It's 30 days. You need to tell us what your plan is and be able to prove that this is a strategy of correcting the violation, whether it be about a fence or it be about a vehicle that's sitting in an illegally placed, unoperable in your property. we have our design is is to give them enough room to tell us how they plan to get it done and then we have the ability to give them under evidence that they have a scheduled plan to the time to do it and then lock that timeline on the back end before we make any other further action does that consider off consider offering or issuing any civil infraction

Mr. Myers, would you recommend that there be a subsection within this ordinance titled notice? Absolutely. With those provisions as the building department follows?

The notices are written to meet state government standards of legal action, and they need to be posted or emailed and identified by the time they get there. Because a year and a half ago, we changed the policy, as you know, from everything being written and sent in the U.S. mail to now legally allowed to be posted on a property or being emailed into the community of ownership.

Okay, so another question. I'm a shady character. Yes. And I've backed a vehicle in where you cannot see... my expired tabs or my no tabs or my no license. Does the police department have the right to, or code enforcement, have the right to go, since they see my car, it's not in the back, it's not obscured, but you see my car, and my car has a flat tire, hasn't moved, is code enforcement then allowed to go and walk onto the property and check for the license? We do not.

However, you just gave it away. You have a flat tire. So we do see the flat tire. We do see the fender bent, or we do see the grill missing, or we do see the glass windows shattered, or the door won't close. Then we get to go, that's the photo we get to prove. And therefore, we get to document and begin the process of asking you to excavate that, remove that from the property. So yes, sometimes we don't have to see that the only thing wrong with the car is that it has expired plates and hasn't had them for two years. It can be something else that demonstrates and pushes that window. When we get a complaint from a neighbor, it's usually much more visible than them just seeing this car covered up and sitting in the driveway for the last two years.

And this ordinance would not apply to anything that's obscured, that code enforcement cannot see. So if you've got a junker in the backyard, the only way that anybody's going to report that to the city is if a neighbor says something.

That's correct. And what that neighbor says, you can use my defines that the responsible party of the rental is liable for the actions taken by the tenant. So the landlord would be responsible for the behavior or the illegal behavior of violations caused by the tenant.

Okay, because the way you said it, it sounded like there was going to be a different approach.

No, it would just be who gets the notices.

My concern would be getting this out there before it's read in so people aren't shocked when they just get a notice. Kind of like letting them know that this is coming in the pipeline.

Beware. i appreciate the insight what we've done in the last three actions that we've taken one was we removed by city council's approval the 120 day late fee on rental properties and we then posted that not only in our media but we also posted it in every one of our clerks and our Employees in the building department when they sent out a notice or a letter of any kind It was highlighted at the bottom there of their signature. We did the same thing when we were opening for a I am asked a Landlord meeting we put that on the bottom of everybody's notice as well as put it in public notice So every time we made a communication We began to inform people where they can get the information find the information and be aware that Changes were being made in the policy and we could do the same in this regard so it can go in the Facebook It can go in our page. It can go in a web page. It can go then on the bottom of each of our letters, no matter how many people we send out to whatever topic we send out.

I think Ms. Holman has a comment. Mr. Myers, would you explain the form that you held?

We already have a proposal to ask the city management to grant us another one but what we've done is we a month ago we opened a public forum for landlords to come and to not only have some concerns and questions but understand the policies that have been changed over the last two years since we've arrived in the city and where we plan to move it in the forward motion. One of those motions is that we would propose to go to a three-year program instead of retain it to a two, so that those who have been legitimate and faithful to complying with our ordinances and guidelines could have a three-year program versus a two-year, meaning in a six-year window, instead of having us at your door three times, you'd only have us there twice. So we've opened that opportunity. We spoke for about 45 minutes. We reminded them of the things that they may or may not have been aware of according to code changes or code rules that their maintenance people or their management people have not been meeting. We reminded them and showed them the guidelines that our dominant response is by law to comply with the International Property Maintenance Codebook 2021. on the interior as well as the exterior as well as height elevation as well as ventilation and window structures so that we have health life and safety and a wellness about the community through our rental programs so that ran for the first one we will run another one but at the meantime we'd like to open one up for our businesses so they're confusing in our city of how to open a business quickly safely and efficiently that you'd like us or like me to consider that you're thinking about as I said the notices are by law and our request is to you get at least the first tell us where you're going not there's a second one before we make any penalty action plan but maybe there's some other issues that are on the table that you're thinking about that we could entertain in this process of reviewing?

I just have a hard time telling people what to do on their private property. I understand the reasoning, truly, but I own my home. I'm paying taxes. It's in my backyard. It's just hard to tell people what to do with their property, that's all. Which is why I don't wanna blindside anybody by this. You have the characters, of course, that will do what they're gonna do. That's not lost on me. And in particular, I have someone on my street over. They just don't have the money right now. I think if there's a hardship that could hit them every time they turn around, this is that family. And I, you know, would hate to have them to find out they've got a timeline in their yard to have to take care of it. I don't know. That's, that's just it for me. Just making sure that everybody knows about it ahead of time, you know, by whatever postings or means necessary so that they know it's coming in the pipeline and, No one's blindsided by it.

Can I address that real quick? Absolutely. Mr. Chair, part of the issue is always misunderstood. They think we're just going to look for throwing you out with the bathwater. The reality is the notice is never restricted to you must move it no matter what. It's you tell me what your problems are, what the issues are, come and make the appeal, and we'll find out if you can verify that, and we may be able to help you make a rational, reasonable timeline decision to comply with it. And I could tell you tonight some of the suggestions I'd give you. but I don't think that would be appropriate at the night. But there's some options available if we know really what's the truth about what's going on in the problem. And so our job would be to be careful enough to prove enough evidence that it's not a scam and it's not being mismanaged. Frankly if it meant you've got to move your car off your grass because the oil is killing the soil underneath And so maybe that part is part of some of those issues that need to be addressed to have those kinds of subjects Personally addressed instead of publicly written in broad brushes they need to be in my opinion they need to be defined tight enough so I know that you have a need you can come tell me within that 30 days so that we can figure out what the best solution is what I think is missing in your conversation that we're working on on behind closed doors on this or in the back issue is a coalition of resources available to such community members for such issues that can be available to them until that gets built into our solution for a community that isn't well financially off all of our ordinance will look unfair to the population but part of the administration's structured ideas and thought processes how to take the next step to creating action of coalition of organizations that can provide assistance that is legitimate, reasonable and rationally on the right reasons. And that's just not been completely developed and publicly available to the entire community. Until it gets available to all, then it shouldn't be isolated to the selected. It should be available publicly. Until that gets done, we're missing that component, whether it's a car or it's a house roof. We have to figure out where that resource comes to help those financially needy people.

All right, so we'll leave this discussion open until next meeting. Thank you. Do we need a motion to table the rest of the discussion?

No.

Okay.

This is just an action item that Mr. Myers and I can handle, and like I said, we'll bring it back to the next meeting.

Very good. Thank you, Mr. Albright. Moving on, we have no unfinished business. Moving to the building department update.

I don't really have anything. Would that be reasonable? I just need to see if I can hear her behind me. There are a lot of things going on, just so you understand, as we will get many more complaints. This is grass season. This is overgrowth season. At this present moment, I have two code officers on my staff. Hopefully we'll have a third one soon our population of a full staff is five So we're in the process of making that adjustment As we rebuild a staff that can meet the demands and the requirements and guidelines of the city When it comes to grass and we are changed the policy again from last year to the year before that I was here we've now having a Streamline system from before the grass system works on a 48-hour notice tagged by the building department and Reviewed by the building department once it's reviewed then it is handed off on a fixed signed scheduled contract of how much gets paid out to our other notices if we notify you wants to cut your grass and we cut your grass and somewhere in the summer we have to notify you again and cut it the second time and If we have to notify you the third time, it's coming with a citation because you're not catching the message that we'd like you to keep the neighborhood clean. And so those are the changes that we've created in our policy. It's going to be part of this moving forward in communication to the public. as it has already been launched going forward. So right now we have three. Right now we are designing it so that it gives us repeat offenders who are oftentimes not local, not in the area and aren't paying attention to our city's needs in those. kind of categories however just for the report I checked with the the clerk that takes care of our grass-cutting who's doing a wonderful job at this point Over 68 percent of our first tag notices this year so far Have been cut before we got back to them And so I think they're getting a bit of our attention and they're getting ready to do some of the things that we're asking them to do. So that's in the process that is new in how we're operating our business with grass cutting this year. Yes.

We're gonna talk about these.

we can all right so there's a couple other things moving on the pages I have scheduled a meeting we'll talk about this in the future but as an update you all may be familiar better than I with a company that was called big boys And we put them back on the table. We've been pushing them a little bit to the left and the right, and they have scheduled a meeting for us to redevelop and reprocess that property. So we'll see what happens on the 15th and see if we can do a lot with a proper design by the overlay in what we need to do.

Thank you.